Happy Sheep

From the rulebook:

Every Sunday, you and your relatives meet at your dear Aunt Dolly’s place for tea and cupcakes.

Dolly is a mad-keen knitter, whipping up a cosy garment every week. It's your job to supply her with the wool from her flock of happy sheep; the fleece of four sheep will meet her needs.

However, she only wants wool of one colour- either black or white. And since her sheepdog Fang ran off with a Bichon Frise last year, those four sheep will need to be within arms reach for you to gather them in.

Will you be the one who gathers the four sheep first, thereby winning Aunt Dolly’s biggest smile- and the biggest scone?

Happy Sheep is a fast, fun game of strategy, memory and bluffing. It takes 15 seconds to set up, two minutes to learn, and five minutes to stop laughing when you trick someone into crying "Happy Sheep" and proving they don’t know black from white.

Includes strategies for gamers and a simple variant for very young kids.

How to play: Mix the 20 tiles (10 black, 10 white) face down and form them into a 4x5 flock. On their turn, a player slides out one tile and looks at it. If it's one of the 4 show-off sheep, they show everyone and put it back in the same place. Otherwise, they may rejoin the sheep to the flock face-down wherever they please.

As soon as any player thinks they know where four sheep of the same colour are in a 2x2 group, they yell "Happy Sheep" and turn over the four tiles. If they're right, they win; if not, they're out and play continues.

It sounds simple, but with other players moving tiles, bluffing and sabotaging, it's easy to get beaten to the win or tricked into calling incorrectly.

For strategic players, the backs of the tiles come in with and without daisies, so by some careful calculation it is possible to improve your decisions...